Life in Occupied America
By Ward Churchill
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 32 Kbps
"By 1890, the census of the United States officially recorded that there were fewer than 250,000 living Native people within the borders of the 48 contiguous states of the United States. This from a population which ranged anywhere from 12ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥15 million: 98% attrition of population from the point the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, and the date that census was taken. Corresponding, you find Native people at that point reduced to approximately 2% of their original land base. And the land, of course, is what it was always about....In order to consume the resources within the land, you had to consume the people of the land. That is the nature of the process. And the situation has not changed at the present.'' ΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥Ward Churchill, from the CD
In this trenchant, and often bitingly acerbic lecture, coupled with a fiery question and answer session, Native activist scholar Ward Churchill lays out the current state of Native America. From the first recorded instance of biological warfare (a written order from the British commander Lord Amherst in 1763 to utilize smallpox infected blankets as a means of cleansing his rebellious subjects) to a Native population today living in conditions of Third World poverty (a life expectancy on the Reservations for a man of less than 50 years, 60% unemployment, and outbreaks of the Bubonic Plague, for example), Churchill tracks the effects, causes, and consequences of 500 years of wars, broken treaties, duplicity, exploitation, environmental degradation, genocide and colonizationΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥life in occupied America (in the words of John Trudell) since predator came.
Crucially, Churchill addresses the confluence of interests that we all have, indigenous, and otherwiseΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥the promise and challenge of overcoming Occupied America.
Ward Churchill was professor of American Indian Studies and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado/Boulder fr Colorado/Boulder. He is a past national spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee. A prolific writer and lecturer, he has authored, co-authored or edited more than 20 books.
Running Time: 59:58
1 Leonard Peltier - A Symbol of Indigenous Resistance
2 Before Predator Came
3 Amherst and Genocide - Smallpox and Biological Warfare
4 Land and Population: 1890 and Vanishing
5 Reservations and Mineral Wealth
6 Poverty and Native North American
7 The Colonised and the Coloniser
8 Diplomacy and Fraud - the General Allotment Act and Land Ownership
9 Guilt, Responsibility and National Sacrifice
10 Uranium, Contamination, Reservations and the Rest of Us
11 The ''Canary Effect,'' Winning and Losing
12 Indian Struggles, Land, Life and Liberty
13 Federally Recognised and Indian Identity
14 Devolution and Disintergration of States - US Out of America
15 How Leonard Peltier Will Be Freed